The complainant has failed to seek condonation of the delay nor gave any valid and acceptable reason that could have been considered as a sufficient cause preventing the complainant from filing his complaint - CIC: Case dismissed as time barred
3 Feb, 2023Information Sought
The complainant has sought the following information pertaining to the companies under the administrative control of MDONER:
1. Provide copies of the Annual Report prepared by MDONER and placed before both the House of the Parliament, in respect of NERAMAC, for the Financial Years 1988-89, 1989-90, 2008-09 to 2017-18.
2. Details of the companies under the administrative control of MDONER, where Central Government is a shareholder.
3. Provide the following details in respect of the said companies, beginning from the year of establishment of MDONER till date:
- Date of holding of Annual General Meeting
- Date of adjourned AGM, if any, in which audited accounts of the company have been approved by the shareholders.
- Dates of placement of the Annual Report of the said companies before both the houses of the Parliament.
4. And other related information.
Grounds for filing Complaint
The CPIO did not provide any information.
Submissions made by Complainant and Respondent during Hearing:
The complainant submitted that since the CPIO had wilfully refused to furnish the information and had fraudulently transferred the request to another public authority despite the fact that the information was not available with them, necessary action may be taken against the CPIO. In his written submissions also, he has stated that strict action may be taken against the CPIO for wilfully transferring the RTI application to the unrelated CPIOs.
The CPIO, Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region in his written submissions dated 09.11.2022 has stated that NEHHDC is the CPSE and comes under M/o DoNER, the information sought in the RTI was not available with the Ministry. Moreover, the records are maintained by NEHHDC and the information on the issues raised by the applicant were available with them. Therefore, the RTI application was transferred to NEHHDC to provide a reply to the complainant.
Observations:
From a perusal of the relevant case records, it is noted that the complaint has been filed after a delay of more than 02 years. The complainant has also failed to seek condonation of the delay nor gave any valid and acceptable reason explaining the delay that could have been considered as a sufficient cause preventing the complainant from filing his complaint within a reasonable time as per the RTI Act. No such explanation was given with the complaint, nor thereafter and not even after receipt of the hearing notice. During the hearing too after he was informed of the extreme delay he did not come up with any reason for the delay. In the absence of any valid reason/sufficient cause preventing him from filing the complaint in time, it is appropriate to consider the case as time barred.
Decision:
In view of the above, the complaint is considered as time barred and accordingly dismissed without going into the merits of the case.
The appeal is disposed of accordingly
Vanaja N. Sarna
Information Commissioner
Citation: T V Sundaresan v. Ministry of Dev. of North Eastern Region (MDONER), North Eastern Dev. Finance Corpn. Limited (NEDFi), North East Handicrafts & Handlooms Dev. Corpn. Ltd (NEHHDC), North Eastern Regional Agricultural Marketing Corporation Limited (NERAMAC), File No. CIC/DONER/C/2021/641495, Date of Decision: 18/11/2022